Sustainability

Cucina Foods adheres to the United Nations view on Sustainability - "meeting the needs of the current generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs."

We are a small company, but we think it is important for us to contribute in ways that we can, to improve sustainability.

We began a lean manufacturing programme back in 2005. Environmentally sustainable practices are a natural extension of lean operational philosophy and techniques.
The lean mantra of eliminating waste fits sustainability initiatives perfectly.

We conducted waste audits to determine what was being thrown away at Cucina Foods. This knowledge was used to determine what we needed to change.
We conducted waste audits to identify waste in 7 key areas:

The results were a real surprise for us; we then set about mapping our activities so that we could use employee knowledge, skills & lean tools to identify and eliminate waste.

Lean works when those individuals and teams have the resources, time, and encouragement to identify opportunities, investigate them, and implement improvements. Lean works when management walks the talk.

We measure our waste each month and have achieved significant reduction in all areas of our business.

Our focus is on promoting New Zealand artisan food producers. As a result, local food means fewer food miles and a dramatic reduction in transportation, days of refrigeration, and tons of pollution and packaging.

We actively seek to significantly reduce the amount of rubbish that goes into landfills, by recycling as much rubbish as we can. We count on the support and participation from our customers and suppliers to make our sustainability efforts effective in minimising the amount of waste that we produce and send to landfills.

Cucina Foods will continue to research and where possible adopt sustainable business practices as we grow.